Both bands start out as groups appealing to a particular demographic, and as such, they develop a rabid fanbase.

In 1980, ten years after emerging onto the music scene, Queen releases The Game, which dramatically changes their sound. Their old fanbase feels alienated, but that's ok, because they now have millions and millions of new fans who know every single word to Another One Bites the Dust and Crazy Little Thing Called Love, but would be hard-pressed to identify older standards like Liar and In the Lap of the Gods...Revisited as even being by the same group.

In 2004, Green Day releases American Idiot, which, aside from the track St. Jimmy, sounds almost nothing like previous Green Day work. The old Green Day fans largely condemn the new direction the band has taken, and the abrupt left turn towards pop that they've made. That's cool, because the band now has millions and millions of new fans who have somehow managed to memorize the lyrics to the epic, 10-minute Jesus of Suburbia to the point that they can recite the entire song--backwards and in Pig Latin.

After The Game, Queen starts to slide away from the smaller concert halls they'd traditionally played, and throughout the '80s, they're touring larger arenas and stadiums with a bigger lightshow and more special effects that the (by comparison) more stripped-down rock shows of the mid-to-late '70s.

After American Idiot, Green Day shifts from touring smaller arenas and amphitheaters to gigantic stadiums. Their special effects, which had previously been limited to a few lights and a flashpot or two, have expanded to include gigantic LED TV screens behind the stage, a lightshow that makes the Magic Tour rig look like something you'd see at the community theatre, massive explosions at the beginning and end (and sometimes in the middle) of virtually every song, and a rain of sparks from above during ballads.

In 2002, Queen releases We Will Rock You: The Musical in an effort to capitalize on its greatest hits.

In 2010, Green Day sends American Idiot: The Musical to Broadway, to capitalize on the popularity of the album of the same name, and to add a few "greatest hits" to the mix as well.

By the way, did I mention that Billie Joe Armstrong is openly bisexual, Green Day often covers We Are the Champions as the last song of their first encore, the title/opening track of 21st Century Breakdown is basically a punk cover of Bohemian Rhapsody (listen to the song's progression carefully, and if that doesn't convince you, watch a live performance of it on Youtube), and Billie Joe's relentless chanting of "day-o" and general mimicry of Freddie Mercury's stage antics, and try and convince me that Green Day isn't the 21st century Queen.

Maybe I wasn't exactly clear on some points. My wife and I actually had a spirited debate about this, which ended with us watching a live video of 21st Century Breakdown and her saying, "Yeah, I can kind of hear it." That is, until the pyro went off, and she said, "Oh my God, you're right!"

I wasn't so much saying that Green Day is the new Queen *musically* in so much as the parallels their careers have taken are pretty astounding. American Idiot could well prove to be Green Day's Game album.

As to American Idiot being a return to their punk roots, eh, maybe. Billie Joe Armstrong's even gone on record and said that the key difference is that, on AI, they really let the guitars fly, did much more technical guitar work, and cranked them up considerably higher in the mix than they typically had in the past. IMO, that equates basically to a shift from a punk, garage-sounding band to a true pop-rock band, and that's the shift that plenty of Green Day fans have complained about. You see the complaints about that change in style more often in reviews of 21st Century Breakdown, because even though the switch happened with AI, even the people who wanted to hate it seem to have admitted in their reviews that AI was just a damn good album start to finish. While 21CB is also a damn good album, it's got a few flaws that AI didn't have, and the reviewers who've been fans since the pre-Dookie days are picking up on it.

I'm probably the biggest Queen/Green Day fan around... obviously I lean more to the Queen side... but both bands are an integral part of what I listened to when growing up... i'm 25 now.

Besides Billy Joe being the closest 21st century showman to Freddie Mercury, both bands have absolutely NOTHING in common....

1) Green Day are 100% punk rock... but have creative ways of delivering it... ie. Insomniac / Warning / American Idiot... each of these are punk rock albums...with their own little twists... Insomniac is Green Day playing like Green Day, Warning is Green Day bringing the Kinks to the 21st century, and American Idiot is Green Day playing like The Who in the 21st century

2) Each of Queen's albums play like a musical spectrum... almost - Hot Space, The Miracle and A Kind of Magic are the exceptions. If you listen to A Night At The Opera, News of the World, Jazz or The Works... you'd have no clue what Queen's influences were... they created their own style, and reinvented themselves album after album

3) Green Day have a knack for doing what they can to come off as rebels.

4) Umm, Queen... lol... no....really no.... I mean Freddie never officially came out on record besides saying he's as gay as a daffodil... and that could have been perceived as a joke... the other three were hardly out of the norm...

5) Green Day always strive to appear to a young crowd

6) Queen's music was never defined by an age group

7) Green Day's lyrics are 99.9% written by Billy Joe...

8) Queen were very close to a 25/25/25/25 split... ok, maybe more like 30/30/20/20

9) Green Day's live show are all about "mixing in" with the crowd and telling stories... Billy Joe get people on stage and has them perform/sing with the band...

10) Freddie Mercury was the puppetmaster... he meticulously controlled the entire event as if his life depended on it... he was the centrepiece and the main event. Not putting the rest of the band down... it's just, he could have been a show on his own if he wanted to... the voice, theatricals, charmed the crowd, etc...

Where both bands come together is that BOTH put on an INCREDIBLE live show, and as I said earlier.. Billy Joe is the 21st cenutry version of Freddie Mercury when places in a live setting.... but that's as far as the similarities go, in my opinon.